


Retrospection

by doctorate_in_realology



Category: Skyrim, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 16:40:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8585950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorate_in_realology/pseuds/doctorate_in_realology
Summary: Serana and Torsten discuss the past, and fate.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So yeah, I haven't uploaded anything in a while and felt a little inspired, so I wrote a quick little one-off. I might flesh this one out, I kinda like this idea...
> 
> Anyway, yeah, not an Overwatch thing, but that's not done! I'll still definitely do OW stuff in the future, but Skyrim is taking over my life again. And the Special Edition has mod support. And there's witcher mods. And I really like The Witcher too ANYWAY HERE BYE

“What about you? What were your parents like?”

Torsten prodded the logs of the campfire, alight with dim embers and flame, with the end of his silver blade. The fire spit sparks and smoke into the night sky, the flame roaring anew as he tossed more kindling into its maw.

The road from Fort Dawnguard to the steps of Castle Volkihar was long and winding. When the two were too far from a settlement with a proper inn for them to lay their heads in for the night, a campfire served well enough.

Torsten preferred it to the warm bed of a tavern in some respects. Skyrim’s Nords were known for raucous merrymaking—kindred spirits with the people of the Skellige Isles, as it were. Being that inns and taverns all across the province typically had a perpetually-high number of the risible folk dwelling within, they were usually inconducive to a good night’s sleep.

A campfire was a good deal more peaceful, albeit in exchange for some comfort. He could hear the supernumerary boughs of innumerable pines—spires of bark that obscured from them the stars in the sky—gently creaking under the clement wind; a chirping chorus of crickets, intent on serenading for as long as the moon hung in the sky; the pitter-patter of a fox’s padded footfalls on the forest floor, crunching dry leaves and snapping twigs—

And, on this night in particular, a question he normally would prefer to avoid discussing, posed to him by a woman who would have been gutted and turned in for coin long before now by others of his creed.

A Witcher and a Higher Vampire, on a quest to save the world from a doom-driven prophetic madman hell-bent on extinguishing the sun from the sky. Stranger things had happened, he supposed—such as a disgruntled old killer of monsters being spurred to conversation about a past he never cared to talk about.

“They were good people,” he finally grumbled in response. “I miss them, sometimes.”

“Oh,” replied Serana, his travelling companion and recent friend. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up a bad memory.”

“It’s fine. If anybody else had asked me, I’d have ignored the question altogether. Not sure why I don’t mind discussing it with you as much.”

“I bring out the budding social butterfly in you, do I?” she asked with a laugh.

“Something like that.”

Serana took a few moments to survey him, to assess his response. She thought it would possibly be best just to drop it and sleep, but she questioned further anyway.

“What happened to them?”

Torsten’s cat-like eyes glowed in the dark. Their pupils thinned to narrow slits as he turned his gaze from the forest to the fire. He stared into the flame, as if waiting for it to answer for him.

“They’ve been dead for quite some time, now. How, I’m not sure. Could have died of a plague, could have died of old age, could have died in a riot for all I know. I haven’t seen them in close to a century.”

Right; Serana sometimes forgot that Witchers aged at a drastically decelerated rate than most others. While Torsten appeared to be a man of somewhere between thirty to forty winters, it was likely he was closer to eighty or ninety.

She asked him once what the process of his genetic mutation had been like. He neglected to revisit it. He offered her the same respect of not persisting when she didn’t feel like discussing what her transformation into a vampire had consisted of, so she had no qualms reciprocating.

“They had employed a Witcher to eliminate a Leshen in the forest near our village. You know what a Leshen is?”

Serana shook her head. “I’ve heard the name, but that’s all.”

“They’re similar to Spriggans, in a way,” he explained, finding a suitable comparison to it between the different but far-from-contrasting species of Tamriel and The Continent. “They dwell strictly in forests and woods; have a deep affinity for nature and wildlife. They’re _vastly_ more dangerous, but I could go on for a far too boring amount of time on that.

“Anyway; my father was the ealdorman of the village, so he was the one that broached the payment. Typically, we lay the terms of our reward before the contract is carried out, but not always. Sometimes, a Witcher will enact the Law of Surprise.”

“What’s the Law of Surprise?” Serana asked, now thoroughly intrigued.

“‘Give me that which you already have, but do not yet know it.’ That’s how the clause goes.” Torsten relayed the quote as if he were mocking whoever had contrived its wording. “It leaves the issue of payment for services rendered up to the whim of fate. Whatever the employer happens to stumble upon later is the Witcher’s reward. Sometimes it’s a horse, for example, or a deed to a home, or a sack of gold. Sometimes it’s a child.”

“And that’s what happened with you,” she concluded.

He nodded. “I had been visiting my aunt and uncle for a time, but I ended up coming home early. My parents didn’t expect to see me so soon.” He exhaled a laugh, though whether or not he actually found it to be humourous was unclear. “That was it; fate had decided I become a Witcher. Gabe—that was the Witcher’s name—took me with him to Kaer Morhen. That’s where I got my training and mutations.”

Serana had to make a conscientious effort not to vocalize her stupefaction—taking someone’s child as payment? Such a concept seemed inhumanly cruel.

“Do you think fate really had a plan for you? Do you believe all that?” she asked, feeling the conversation about to spiral into existentiality.

“I’m not sure,” he said with a shrug. “Witchers have a bit of a history with destiny, believe it or not. Geralt of Rivia and his Child Surprise, Ciri—famous names where I’m from, almost straight out of a fairy tale. And now, here I am too; just some jaded old monster slayer for-hire who turns out to be some ‘Dragonborn’, saving the world from dragons and vampires. They’re not even dragons either, they’re just damn big wyverns. But I guess ‘Wyvernborn’ doesn’t have as nice of a ring to it.”

Serana laughed; the monster academic in him just couldn’t resist. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m glad it happened.”

His eyebrows elevated by a few fractions. “Yeah?”

“Sure. Wouldn’t have met each other otherwise, would we?”

At that, he chuckled.

“True. Very true.”


End file.
